You want to diversify where your savings are deposited? How much should you invest in gold? Should you buy this and take delivery?

Here I offer 5 tips for the new Investor in this precious metal.

1. How much should I invest?

This is a personal decision, but most commentators would recommend anything from 5 – 25% of your wealth should be in gold. It depends on how ‘bullish’ you are. This metal is an insurance for the bad times and it will never go to zero in value. Many other investments have that possibility.

2. How much bullion should be in my possession and how much in a vault?

It is sensible to have some physical bullion in your possession. The ratio is yours to decide. Small bars and coins are the best option. You can buy small tradable pieces (or coins).

Many people think that investing is merely buying 100 shares of some company or selling 100 shares of some company. However, there’s more to it than that. Many of the great investors have had their own style of investing. While many think that style is associated only with fashion, it is also present in investing as well.

The two main styles of investing can be classified as either conservative or aggressive. So which style are you? The following may help find your style:

Conservative

If you follow this style, it means that you put your money into something that is proven from past performance, tried and true. It is something that is safe and secure, such as government-back securities, but how does this relate to investing in stocks?

If you are a conservative investor, you tend to invest in companies that have some of the following qualities:

1) Proven past performance – These companies have shown increasing sales and earnings consistently over the years. The company won’t be spectacular,but it will be strong and steady for years to come.

2) Market size – Conservative investors tend to invest in companies with large capitalization. In other words, the company should have a value of at least $10 billion.

3) Companies should be market leaders in their industries.

4) Staying power – These companies should have sufficient financial clout that they should be able to withstand market uncertainty and economic uneasiness. It shouldn’t matter what the market is doing or which politician is suddenly elected.

In general, if you are a conservative investor, you don’t really care if a company’s share price jumps, as you are more concerned about a steady growth over the years.

Aggressive investing

Although aggressive investors can plan for the long term and can look at intermediate terms, they are generally looking for stock whose prices resemble someone on a pogo stick. They are looking for the potential to explode in price!

If you are an aggressive investor, you tend to invest in companies that have the following qualities:

1) Great potential – The company has superior goods, services or ways of doing business that puts them ahead of their competition

2) Potential capital gains – aggressive investors don’t worry about dividends and may even avoid them. You feel that a company should invest their dividends back into the company, which in turn can lead to greater growth.

3) Innovation – Does the company have technologies, ideas or innovative methods that makes them stand out from their competitors?

In general, aggressive investors tend to go for companies that have a small market capitalisaion and are worth less than a billion dollars. The reason for this is because they may be able to see the growth potential in these companies and are willing to take more of a risk for a greater return. They may see that a small cap company may become a market leader in time. Remember, IBM and Microsoft started out small, but they made a lot of aggressive investors very wealthy.

If you are starting to invest, it may pay to take a look at yourself and determine what sort of investment style your have as a way of guiding your investment decisions. Do you take a big gamble on a small company you feel has the potential to make you a millionaire but may go bankrupt next year, or do you invest in a very large company that delivers steady, predictable growth over the years that you know will be still around in ten years? Only you can answer that question. Good luck, and start investing!

What is trend following?

Trend following allows smart investors to play the market in both good and bad times. The principles are also simple enough to grasp relatively quickly, especially when compared to some of the more complex systems available. Following market trends adheres to a few basic ideas that all lie on the basis of the market. The trend trader essentially just has to get their signals and decide on how much they want to invest.

How does trend following works?

Trend following is exactly what it sounds like. Normal stock investing usually relies on trying to outsmart the market. The rich investor is the one who predicts the next big innovation or gets in before the big surge. Trend following takes a different approach to the market. Traders practicing trend following merely try and see the next trend and jump onboard in time to make a profit. The big difference lies in the fact that they will wait until the trend has already broken. There is considerably less risk involved since the trend is already in play on the market. There isn’t any guesswork involved; one must only understand the current price signals.

What are trend following signals?

Where do these signals come from? Trend following traders will base their decisions off of market analysis. The biggest focus will be placed upon general price trends viewed. Speculation and predictions will be left to other investment systems. Trend followers just need to watch the trading prices and keep an eye on the market averages.

What exactly are you trying to win when you bid in a tax lien auction? The highest bidder on a property is granted a tax lien certificate legal paperwork warranting you first position authority ahead of the bank-on the property, and entitling you to rights of foreclosure should the owner fail to recompense the government for the accrued back taxes. By investing in tax lien certificates, you become the secured creditor for the real estate.

Usually, the owner will redeem the property only about 1 in 250 homeowners fail to pay the taxes within the redemption period. This is not a bad thing though-you reap the monetary gain of the interest and penalties accumulated within that period, while dodging the responsibilities and potential hassles of foreclosure.

Why Stop At Just One?

The number of tax lien certificates you can add to your investment portfolio basically comes down the funds you have available to you. Today’s market abounds with quality properties and high interest rates. Redemption periods vary between states and even between counties-so multiple tax liens can ensure a steadier source of income. Besides, waiting out a single lien is just no fun. Stay actively engaged in tax lien certificate investing at all times to keep your skills sharp and your interest engaged.

Places to Avoid

Location is always important when it comes to real estate and tax lien properties are no exception. Some states offer excellent opportunities for the investor and other states are not so generous. States that have minimum bids are best avoided. Bids in this state will begin around the 49%-50% mark of the property’s market value. This immense initial investment just isn’t worthwhile, especially for the new investor.

Guaranteed Earnings

Not to worry-many states start off with bidding rate whatsoever. You can get a certificate at a low investment and then proceed to make easy money. And if the property does end up going into foreclosure, you can become the owner of some very valuable real estate for a ludicrously low price.

Tax lien certificate investing is an exciting alternative to the more well known investments such as stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. It is low-risk and no matter what happens, you make a profit. So what are you waiting for-the sooner you start the sooner you can start raking in the cash.

(IX) Innovation

It is much easier to destroy then to create, that’s why it’s so easy to sink a company then to see it grow. Innovation in your business model, service, product, brand, technique and technology is vital to seeing your company take off. We live in a constantly changing world, propelling yourself to become a market leader means staying ahead of the change, to just survive you need to at least change in step. Most corporate juggernauts are the changers; they create the need for change to take place. Innovation is what keeps your company flowing.

Investing in innovation can reap exponential returns. Allowing your company’s environment to be open to new and creative ideas not only projects trust in your employees, but promotes vesting in the company. If an employee feels like their ideas are at least heard and have some degree of validity you’ll create a support team wanting to see your business succeed. Innovation starts with you the owner or manager, the head executive, the one everyone looks to for guidance and direction, leadership and vision. That is why the tenth and final examination that needs to take place is self-examination.

(X) Your Leadership

It all starts and end with you. You are the leader of your own destiny. You may also be leading others. They’re reliant upon your decision and choices to create a stable, profitable, safe working environment. They’re looking to you to inspire them and challenge them. So what can of leader are you? There are many leadership styles, and you can find volumes of tests to figure out which type you are, this isn’t an article about style; it’s one about examining your leadership. What is the vision and mission of your company or organization? What are your one, three, five, seven, and ten year goals? What is your strategic direction for this fiscal year? If you can’t answer every question in less than thirty seconds time you might want to consider finding someone to replace you. Many founders don’t have the skill set to lead a company. They’re great idea people, just not leaders, and that’s ok. You were the visionary, the risk-taker but that can only get you so far.

You have to be able to influence and inspire those around you. Don’t be afraid to be the dumbest person in the room. Wise leadership finds the best and retains them. You’re still the top dog, because you have the direction and vision for the company, you can’t teach that. Annually review your leadership skills, how do your employees feel about your leadership, what tangible evidence is there you are a good leader?

A great tool that managers can use to set organizational goals and measure its progress is through the innovation scorecard. It details the firm’s financial and operational objectives, with which the purpose is to allow the firm to get higher return on innovation such as cash generated from innovation investments. These investments may include Research and Development (R&D) expense, development of new business methods and hiring of new people. Cash generated from these investments may also include profit contribution of new processes or products.

When setting objectives for return on innovation, organizations should come across a given set of measures, among which include profit and revenue for every employee that is relative to competitors; profit from new processes and products divided by innovation investment and internal rate of return from innovation investments.

Moreover, organizations should establish goals for the said measures and associate compensation of managers in order to achieve these goals. Superiors should also carefully identify authorized individuals who should be held responsible for the attainment of these goals. In addition, they should set goals that can generate innovation return through the use of the innovation scorecard.

There are four measures that make up the innovation scorecard. One is entrepreneurial leadership. This can be measured by doing an independent survey among employees, in which the results can be used to determine how well a firm is able to attract and maximize entrepreneur productivity. Entrepreneurial leadership may cover topics such as rate of employees that can improve the firm’s competitive status without interference; rate of employees with rewarding career opportunities and remuneration and rate of employees whose bonuses and other extra perks are linked to improvements in terms of customer satisfaction scores.

Another is open technology. This can be gauged by interviewing a firm’s product developers and/or technologists. Results of this measure can help identify a firm’s vulnerability to new technologies that might be a threat to its competitive status. Interviews may include topics such as rate of current revenues based on products introduced in the past two years; rate of current revenues from products outside the scope of your firm’s R & D and the number of persons delegated to monitor the latest technologies.

The third measure, which is boundary-less product development, can be gauged by interviewing a cross segment of product development teams. These interviews can help superiors set time to market streamlines and enhance the probability of launching successful product innovations. Topics covered under this measure are the number of new products created with cross-functional groups; reduction in new products’ time-to-market over the past three years as well as the number of groups getting quick feedback from specific customer with regard to prototypes on new products.

The last measure in the innovation scorecard is disciplined resource allocation, which can be measured by interviewing participants in the field of resource allocation for new products. This measure can help determine flaws in making investment decisions and suitable practices that can boost return on innovation. Interviews may cover topics such as rate of new product launches alongside thorough post-mortem analysis; number of discussions for sharing the best and worst practices throughout the firm and the rate of resource allocation on new products derived from stage-gate methods and portfolio grid.

To maximize the use of the innovation scorecard, firms should compare industry results and incorporate the scorecard into their compensation and performance measurement systems.

PLR articles can be used in a variety of ways to maximize traffic to your website and thusly, profits. Search engines love updated content and your website will benefit greatly from regular updated articles appearing on your site. You can also break them up into a series for your newsletter or combine them into an ebook. Why not go further and create an eCourse product that is unique to you and go and dominate your market. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

A PLR article is a way to add exclusive fresh content to your website that has not already been plastered all over the Internet. PLR article content is distinctively yours to use as you see fit and because you own the exclusive rights to PLR articles, you are free to rearrange the content into as many combinations as you desire. In fact, tweaking these articles or using them as a building block for rewrites is a lot easier than writing from scratch.

PLR articles give you a virtually endless supply of exclusive materials from which to create the content that will rank highly with search engines.

Private label right articles also score high with website visitors because this exclusive content is not the unappreciated rehashing of the same old thing. Websites that use PLR articles increase the money making power of their website by providing content that holds visitors attention. This fosters a belief that the business behind the website is an innovative company, and people are attracted to investing in innovation through making purchases.

Lately, a lot of investors and friends have asked my opinion about the effects of the credit crisis on commercial real estate. You’d have to be living in a cave not to know about residential values falling, but there doesn’t seem to be a general consensus about where commercial is going. If I had to forecast, and technically I do because the fund I co-manage operates as an asset based lender collateralizing on commercial real estate, then I would say we are heading back to reality. To understand where reality is, I think it’s important to understand the unreal place commercial real estate has been in. During the boom, commercial real estate, and most notably income properties, seemed to lose their very definition. Income property by its name is supposed to produce income. Since real estate became everyone’s favorite alternative investment, there were a lot more buyers competing for the same income properties and many of those inexperienced buyers didn’t understand the methods of valuating them.

The fervor to just own property seemed to be greater than the glaring fundamentals of the property they were buying. Commercial real estate’s most basic valuation method is the income approach, and the outcome provides a capitalization rate (CAP). Without going into a whole seminar on the topic, it is basically net income before debt divided by the price. While people should have been buying properties north of an 8% CAP (the higher the better when you are the buyer), they were buying them down in the 5′s and 6′s, and I have even seen some extremely over-valued scenarios in the 3′s. At those prices, there is a lot of out of pocket money going into servicing the debt on a monthly basis, and it was happening all in the name of price appreciation. That’s just not how this investment is supposed to work. However, it was actually working for a brief time because of the upward momentum of the market, and if your time horizon was short, there were decent profits to be made off of a flip.

We are now seeing CAP rates starting to creep back up north of 7%, which translates into lower values. High valued areas are still coming in lower than that, but that is a function of perception on future valuations and not a reality based off of current cash flow. The numbers are under the microscope even more so because of more stringent lending guidelines, and also due to the fact that most of the buyers that are left are professional investors that live and die by these valuation formulas. . At the end of the day, if you are valuating commercial real estate on price comparisons then it looks like it’s starting to slide.

However, if you are basing your valuations on the income approach, it’s clear that commercial real estate is going back to exactly where it should be; producing income. When I was first getting involved in real estate, I received the best piece of free advice from a very wise man. He said, “Owning commercial real estate is like a business and almost every business needs to generate income. So let the income be the cake and the appreciation be the icing, and everyday will feel like a birthday.”

Copyright: Dominic Mazzone, Regent Global Funds 2008

Hello, my name is Sam and I’m going to teach you guys the importance of investing. What risks are involved and whats the profits that you could inherit. About a year ago I was in my economics class when I was truly introduced into the stock market (Senior Year). My teacher made us play a stock market game with “virtual money”, and divided us into equal teams. We both had $50,000 to play with and only 2 – 3 stocks to pick. To this very day I don’t remember what stocks I picked, but at the end of the school year my team was the winner with $100,000+ more in gains. I was in shock.

How did “I” win the market game? Easy I research the stocks that interest me the most. At the time it was computer and technology companies. This was fun to research since I was a big fan of technologies, so I focused all my attention on those types of stocks. As for you, do the same by finding you best market. It could be from clothing lines to energy corporations. Just find your niches, then do research on the companies. So while doing I came across many; in not hundreds of virtual stock market games online. This is where I became the master at such young age and actually taught myself. I signed up for one of the virtual market games which I quickly learned and began trading with the stocks I research. I kept a daily tab on news information about those stocks and spotted where I needed to sell out.

So here are the steps you need to follow.

1. Get a paper and pencil out, or notepad and start writing what your favorite categories are.

2. Start looking for Companies in your categories. Start with a minimum of 5

3. Look for a virtual stock market trading game. I prefer Wall Street Survivor.

4. Bookmark Wall Street Journal, and keep tabs on your stocks. ( News + Press Releases)

5. Keep, trading your account about 3 – 5 times a week to keep up. Watch your profit and losses.

6. Every Saturday keep a record of how much you gained or loss.

Now once you’ve master the stock market or feel confident, go ahead and open a trading account with any brokerage. I prefer Scottrade since their commission on trades are only $7 flat. Also start your account with only $100, and only use money you can afford to loose. The more confident you feel, the more money you’ll be able to risk. Never jump the gun.

Manage your profits! I’ve seen young people my age blow away their profits and don’t think about the future. Upon gaining your profits don’t use them to party or brag. Instead save them for later use, or on something much more valuable; your first house, car..etc.

Example:

You bought XYZ @ $3.50 a Share, you bought 500 shares.

2 Weeks later XYZ went @ 19.50 a Share and you sold.

You gained $7000-$8000, Save it or re-invest at least 35% of it.

Thanks For Your Time.

One of the questions that I frequently get from visitors to my web site, http://www.taxlienlady.com, is “Can I invest in tax lien certificates online or through the mail?” Many people want to invest in tax lien certificates but don’t have the time freedom to physically attend the tax sales, so they want to do it online or by mail. A couple of tax lien states do hold online tax sales, and a few will allow you to mail in your bid. I don’t, however, recommend investing in tax lien certificates by mail or online unless you can look at the properties or have someone else look at them for you.

First let’s talk about online tax sales. As tax lien investing has become more popular with the average person (it’s not just the secret of the wealthy anymore), it’s also become more competitive. Over the last three or four years, in states where the interest rate is bid down, the bidding has been going lower and lower – as low at .25% in some sates. And in states where the amount of the lien is bid up prices have been bid higher and higher. Online auctions increase the competition even more. Now instead of bidding against every interested party who can come to the sale, you’re competing with every interested party with a computer.

Three things happen at these online tax sales. First of all a lot more bidders show up because all they have to do is get to their computer to register for the sale. Secondly, more money – or lower interest rates are bid for tax lien certificates because there are an increased amount of bidders. And thirdly more properties are sold at these sales. You see, at most tax sales there are “left-over” liens that no one bids on that go to the county. A lot of these properties are junk properties. They are really not worth anything and that’s why the owner stopped paying the taxes. Any bidders that have done their due diligence will know this and will not bid on these properties. But when sales are held online these properties will typically be sold. Don’t you be one of those online bidders who buys a tax lien on a worthless piece of property!

Would you purchase real estate that you didn’t look at first? Even though you are not purchasing the property when you buy a tax lien (you are only paying the past due taxes and penalties and putting a lien on the property), you still need to make sure that the property is valuable. There is always the chance that the lien will not be redeemed and that you will wind up with the property. And if you do have to foreclose on the property, you want it to be worth much more than you have invested in it. Your investment isn’t only the amount that you paid at the sale, but all of the subsequent taxes that you paid, any legal fees and foreclosure costs, and any costs that you incur to fix up the property before you sell it.

Here is something else to consider if you decide to go ahead and tax lien certificates online anyway. You will pay more money for tax lien certificates online than you would at a regular tax sale. First of all you will have to have a hefty deposit just to register for the sale. If you do not purchase any liens your deposit will be refunded. If you do make a purchase it money will be deducted from your deposit. Even if you make a purchase by mistake, the money will be deducted and it will not be returned. If you do not complete the transaction you could be banned from any future sales. In addition to that you will have to pay the online auction company a commission, which could be as high as 10% of the purchase price of the lien(s) that you buy.

What about purchasing tax lien certificates through the mail? Many states do allow for purchasing of tax lien certificates through the mail. Most states allow this for their “left-over” liens and a couple of states will even allow mailed in bids for their tax sales. Buying tax lien certificates through the mail does not have all the problems that I described for online tax sales, especially if you are able to do your due diligence on the properties before placing your bid. You are, however, at a disadvantage when you mail in your bid for a tax sale. I suggest that you find out what the procedure is at the sale. If your bid is read out loud at the sale and those present at the sale have the opportunity to out bid you, than you are at a disadvantage. It is the investors who are present at the sale that have the advantage over you.

There are opportunities in some states that sell leftover liens (sometimes these are referred to as “over-the-counter” liens or “assignment” liens) that are available for purchase through the mail. Be very careful though to do your due diligence on these properties before you placing a bid. Very often, as I mentioned earlier, there is a reason that these liens were not purchased by other investors. If no-body else wanted it maybe there is something wrong with it! Check the property out before you buy. With tax lien investing, there are no refunds!